Scavenging for Bargains

Tag Archives: DEST

At the end of last year, on the 20th of December, Destination Maternity (NASDAQ:DEST) and Orchestra Prémaman (EPA:KAZI) announced that they had entered in a definitive merger agreement in which Orchestra Prémaman would acquire Destination Maternity in an all stock deal. Destination Maternity shareholders are going to get 0.515 Orchestra Prémaman shares in the form of ADSs that will be listed in the US and will own 28% of the combined company after completion of the transaction. The consideration represented a 34% premium at the time of the announcement, and since it’s a deal between two relative small companies with no regulatory or financing risk you wouldn’t expect a huge merger spread.

This couldn’t be farther from the truth than possible though. Ever since the deal was announced the spread has bounced around 20% (although sometimes spiking down or up significantly), and in the past week the spread has exploded to a totally ridiculous 63%. This week the spread has come down a bit again, but is with 36% still offering an extremely compelling opportunity in my opinion. I wrote an article about it on Seeking Alpha that after a 24 hour embargo is now accessible for everybody. You can find it here.